Congress on Wednesday accused the Modi government of “letting down” Central government employees by “inadequate” hike in salaries and allowances in the Seventh Pay commission recommendations in time of run away inflation.

“98 lakh central government employees feel disillusioned, let down and short changed by the lopsided and inadequate hike in salaries and allowances by Modi government in these times of run away inflation and all round increase in prices,” the party’s chief spokesman Randeep Surjewala said.

Claiming that the hike is the “lowest in the last seven decades”, he said the hike in salaries and allowances is a mere 15% on basic pay and not 23.5% as is being wrongly claimed by the government.

“This gets even more stark when compared to the fact that 6th Pay Commission had recommended a 20% hike in salaries and allowances but the then Congress government doubled it to 40%. 7th Pay Commission recommended a hike of 14.29% and Modi government merely raised it to a pittance of 15%”, he said.

He said even the ratio between the lowest and the highest salary has increased instead of the gap being narrowed. “Naturally, employees at the lower rung of the salary will suffer the most”, he added.

“7th Pay Commission implementation establishes the mal-intent and lack of sincerity of Modi government”, he added.

Meanwhile, alleging that there were “two anomalies” in the implementation of the recommendations of the 7th Pay Commission, CPI-M on Wednesday said it would voice reservation against recommendations in Parliament.

“We have to see the fine-print, the details of how the Finance Commission will be implemented. There are two anomalies. These recommendations were to be implemented from an earlier date. We now heard the government saying that it will be done from this year. So the government has already saved a lot of money which is due to the working people of our country,” party general secretary Sitaram Yechury told reporters here.

He said that secondly they have to see whether justice had been done to all workers or employees.

“Usually and even now the suspicion is that higher ranking bureaucrats and officers have gained more than the ones who are not so high ranking. That is patently unfair. We will study that,” Yechury said.

He said that the party would take up the issue in the monsoon session of Parliament